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Hi Mindy (and anyone else),
If you define NT Greek as the type of Greek that the New Testament was written in, then I have a suggestion.
I remember the happy times 30 years ago, when I used to read Greek in regular face-to-face groups outside class time to supplement the texts that were prescribed for classwork and assessment as part of the formal course of study. Now-a-days my life is a little busy, so I don’t want to join a long-term or heavy commitment reading group, but if you’d like to read a couple of thousand words of Greek together, then I’d be happy to.
To assess the feasibility of the idea, perhaps we could consider the following:
- What is your time-zone? What times do you prefer? Would you prefer synchronous or asynchronous communication? [Mine: UTC+8, Prefer noontime, (UTC 2am to UTC 6am). I prefer asynchronous communication, so we don’t have to co-ordinate times to less than within a day or two.]
- Which pronunciation system do you use? Would you like to discuss by writing or speaking? [For authours of this period, I use Buthian (without the diphthongonal concession for eta). I prefer integrated text and speech if our pronunciation systems are similar, or text-only if they are markedly different]
- Would you prefer to work with the Greek texts if the original authours:
- in and of itself analytically in terms of grammatical description,
- by working closely with a translation - your own or an existing one, or
- by paraphrasing into your own Greek?
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If we were each to propose about 1,000 words to be read, then that might not be too Herculean a labour. My prescriptions would all be from from the late antique authours that I’m currently interested in: Polybius (Roman history), Philostratus the Lemnian (Descriptions of paintings that were hanging in a gallery during the Roman imperial period), and Strabo (Greek geographer, writing in the early Roman Imperial period).
The references for those texts are:
Polybius, Histories 3.55, A description of a campaign in winter. (c. 260 words).
Philostratus Major, Images, 1,17 A description of a painting of the Bacchae. (c. 360 words).
Strabo, Geography, 11.6, A description of somewhere near the Caspian Sea. (c. 430 words)
What would your prescriptions be? Where are you in the range of beginners? Would you be up for a couple of (or three) hundred words a week?
If you are interested, perhaps we could start soon.
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A number of years of formal study and some private reading for consolidation and extension. Formal study is good because experienced readers arrange an order of text that we can deal with. I don’t think that people can go very far in Greek by watching others, or refering to the reference works that others wrote based on their interaction with the Greek. We stand on the shoulders of giants so thay we can look up. Learning is different to being taught.
There is only one level. The texts are the level playing ground we all meet on. Less experienced or less trained readers see small obstacles, more experienced readers, who have outgrown their training grapple with more complex issues. The idea that language learners need to master the basics before moving on tp the next level has been debunked since the 1970’s. As an adult learner, you have so many resources to bring to bear pn the learning experience. Everybody comes to language learning as an experienced language learner and language user. Nobody is a beginner in the sense that they are approaching something new.
In approaching the texts we find ourselves - discovering our personal challenges and overcoming them.
My reading is mine, and yours is yours and somebody else’s is their own too. An unregulated group is always a potentially mixed group. You may learn a few points from the attempts of others, that will be incidental. So long as you learn something from your own reading, you will have achieved something from your reading. Discussions about the Greek of the text, or its general content is a great feature of reading together with others. A shared experience can be mutually beneficial.
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Have you seen 古希腊语(新约)教程, 华东师范大学出版社。 ISBN 978-7-5617-5834-2. RRP 198元。 That work is in 3 volumes. The second volume is a comprehensive Greek-Chinese vocabulary. You might pick it up for 120 元 online.
Thanks.